Patna: Buxar, Jehanabad and Arwal in south Bihar and Saharsa, Madhepura and Siwan in north Bihar are set to join the list of fully electrified districts in August.

The additions will take the total number of households electrified in Bihar under the erstwhile Har Ghar Bijli scheme of the state, which has now been subsumed in the Centre's Saubhagya scheme, to around 20.5 lakh.

Bihar State Power Holding Company Limited (BSPHCL) director (administration) R. Lakshmanan shared this information with The Telegraph.

At the time of launch of household electrification work in Bihar in November 2016, the estimated number of households in need of electrification was 28 lakh. As of now, work has been completed in 11 districts. Work was completed in Bhojpur, Munger, Sheikhpura, Nalanda, Gopalganj, Purnea, Supaul and Kishanganj in June itself. Katihar, Begusarai and Gaya joined the list in July, while Khagaria, West Champaran and Nawada are set to join the list in less than a week's time.

"We had aimed to complete the household electrification work in Araria and Aurangabad districts too in July but infrastructure bottlenecks delayed the work. But it will be completed latest by the end of first week of August," Lakshmanan said.

The state government has set December 2018 deadline for completion of household electrification work in Bihar, which is three months ahead of the deadline set by the Centre for completing this work across the country.

Power companies in Bihar have also taken one step to ensure that not a single household is left out of the ambit of the household electrification work and letters are being sent to all district magistrates and people's representatives in the districts, where the work has been completed, in case any household had been left out by mistake during the drive.

With electrification work in 20.5 lakh households is set to be completed by end-August, sources in the power company hinted that efforts will be made to complete the work in the remaining 7.5 lakh households at the earliest.